


field guide to songbirds.

by lifeincantos



Category: Hunger Games Trilogy - Suzanne Collins
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Character Study, Friendship, Gen, excessive use of metaphor, rue was always the mockingjay
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-14
Updated: 2020-02-14
Packaged: 2021-02-28 01:22:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,705
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22705411
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lifeincantos/pseuds/lifeincantos
Summary: You are Rue, and you write memories of your life in places where the Capitol cannot reach them.
Relationships: Katniss Everdeen & Rue, Rue & Thresh (Hunger Games)
Comments: 2
Kudos: 19





	field guide to songbirds.

**o1**. You know what it’s like, when the world is large. You see it, the sun breaking the line of the horizon and burning through the morning sky. It sets the fields on fire, stalks of wheat crackling golden from within, burning off the morning dew. It pools soft and rosy where the sky and land meet at the farthest point you can see, and because you can’t see any farther you don’t know what else is there. You don’t think about borders and perimeters and fences, you don’t think about other Distracts, you don’t think about the apples you pull from the trees and where they go when they don’t stay with you. The sun kisses the earth with gentle lips and illuminates the whole of the orchard and from where you are sitting, in the very highest branches, you are at the top of the world. 

These are things you can always remember: the way the air shimmers in earliest June, caught between the chill of the night and the warming day; how the small apples fit in your palm as if the two were made for each other and how the tart juice will cling to your lips the rest of the day even after you’ve buried the core and the stem when the peacekeepers aren’t looking; the smell of grain and wet soil and astringent crocuses that herald winter’s end. 

The jeweled blue sky; the breeze catching you as you jump from branch to branch. 

You don’t know it yet but you write these memories into places that can’t be touched. You write them into your voice and your spine, and when you sing at the start and end of the day you’ll always feel the soft hands of an early summer breeze. When you straighten suddenly in fear, you’ll remember the sensation of catching a branch in your hand, more sure than anything else, and you’ll be braver for it. 

You love District Eleven; it loves you back. 

* * *

**o2**. Dad teaches you sleight of hand by passing a coin back and forth between his fingers so fast that you never track it, except when he slows down. He shows you what it takes: quiet, focus, and a smile to distract whomever you’re fooling. 

You laugh at Dad’s distraction, silly and grandiose, and you practice what he shows you. You practice that crucial moment between passing the coin from one hand to another, how to make your fingers move even faster and quicker. It’s harder than palming the tiny apples, the ones you can sneak past the mayor and the peacekeepers, but you practice it after dinner and in bed before you fall asleep. You learn how to make it look as if you’ve pulled it seamlessly from behind someone’s ear, then from thin air. You learn how to make it disappear even when someone is looking right at it. 

In the late evening, between dinner and sleeping, you sit next to Dad. Mom is usually holding one of the littler ones, and maybe your next oldest sister is pressed against you on the other side. Sometimes you listen to the Capitol’s radio. Sometimes you all take turns telling stories. Sometimes everyone is quiet and those are the hardest times. 

But you are all always together. 

* * *

**o3**. _Let’s fix that hair, Rue_. 

Your mother’s hands have always been deft with your hair, styling its thick curls without pulling hard enough to hurt. Both of your hands are stiff with calluses but Mom is always careful and precise. She pulls back the pillowed bulk of your hair into a smaller bun, softly encircles it with braids. When you were young, your mother said it was like a crown. Lifting you in her arms high enough that you might see yourself in the worn glass of the mirror over her dresser, you smiled and pressed your fingers against the intricate updo, and you understood what it felt like to be pretty. 

The warmth of your mother’s hands, sunlight illuminating the old, warped mirror, a crown braided into your hair. 

When they call your name, that is all you can feel. You don’t move, not at first, because you drown a little in the feeling of Mom’s hands working their clever, competent magic in your hair. You remember what it feels like to be held close and see yourself with a crown on the top of your head, of laughing with your father and the thick wrought coin you passed between each other. 

Sitting together, just last night. Your mother just this morning, making you pretty. 

It will be a tradition — every year on the Reaping, she’ll do it for you. Braid your hair before everyone assembles, just one of so many of District Eleven’s children — thousands that congregate every year, waiting for someone to be Reaped so the rest can be released back into the sun drenched orchards, waiting to go back to work and back to the realest life any of you have ever known. 

Eventually, someone moves you to the stage. No one in the crowd says a word; no one in the crowd applauds when your escort congratulates you. No one says a word when she calls for a volunteer. You’ve never been to a Reaping before so you don’t know if this is normal, if this is what it’s like for the ones who watch or the ones who wind up standing on the stage in front of the Justice Building. 

Above you, the large television screens broadcast your face. When you look at them, the angle hides your hair crown until you can’t see it anymore. 

* * *

**o4**. The food is so strange and vibrant and rich that on the train ride you eat until you can’t move. Your escort tells you the names of things, chitters excitedly about pacing yourself, but you don’t remember the names of the hundreds of jams and unidentifiable meats, and you don’t pace yourself. No one yells at you or drags you off the train when you eat a whole plateful of fruits you’ve never seen before, and you don’t realize that the other boy from your district — Thresh, that name you do remember — has let you lean against him until you notice how warm the space between you has become. 

Still, that night, you dream about apples. 

* * *

**o5**. Whenever you smile at Thresh, he smiles back at you. That is enough for the parade and parties and the overly large bedroom they give you to sleep in, larger than your house in Eleven. You think of your mother and father and little siblings, how they would all press close together in the tiny living room on the couch that your family has had since long before you were born. There’s nothing this soft and silky in Eleven — not the mattresses or the blankets, not the rug underfoot, and part of you delights in feeling the new and startling textures. The other part thinks of telling your little siblings about them, and then all of you shrinks at that. 

You don’t understand why it’s so wonderful and so staggeringly painful all at once; these feelings are bigger than you and born of orders of magnitude that eclipse only one person. And you’re still only twelve years old. 

Thresh gravitates towards the weapons — the large, heavy knives, the big weights. He tests them, what they feel like, and you watch him do that until he drifts over to the survival stations. The plants are all familiar; leaves from trees that you have lived in, berries that will kill you at a taste and others that are full of sweet juice and water. 

Some of the others — the ones from One and Two, mostly — spar with each other. They laugh sometimes, concentrate other times. You watch them, the way they move with resolve and trained strength. But also the way that some of them are slow on turns and others move loudly, loud enough to be heard throughout the whole training center. Their arms and eyes are quick, but they don’t watch the ground. 

You learn the pattern, and eventually, you test it. They never find you or the knife you take from them, and from up high you can see the whole of the training center. It’s not as big as an orchard at the end of the world, but it’s everything you need. 

* * *

**o6**. The Girl on Fire notices you after a day of trailing her. She’s faster than the others, but not as fast as you. When you smile at her and the boy, they smile back, like Thresh. 

* * *

**o7**. The spotlights are unnaturally warm and your dress is oddly stiff, but you speak to Caesar Flickerman with all the confidence that comes from watching twenty three other tributes train from up higher than any of them ever look. You’re fast, and you tell him that. You have a chance, you also tell him. He agrees and you don’t hear the same showman voice he uses for everyone that sits across from him. Because you believe it, really believe it, in the hollows of your bones; you’re fast and smart, you know how to stay alive and sneak fruits to eat. 

You don’t know what it’s like, yet, to feel your mortality and worry about how to hold it so that it doesn’t shatter in your hands. You’re bright and capable, but young. 

When you’re done, Thresh quietly puts a hand on your shoulder. He doesn’t say anything, he never really does, but he stills smiles at you when you smile up at him. That’s just fine. You don’t need words. Besides, you’re too busy watching the Girl on Fire be that girl on fire again, spinning in a circle of flames, and when her partner talks about his crush on her you’re wondering giddily what it’s like to be in love. 

* * *

**o8**. The world shatters around you, and all you can do is hold onto the things you know so well you don’t have to think about them. Run fast, climb high. Lucky for you, these things save your life. You avoid the clash of weapons that mark the bloodbath and grab something, just one thing but one thing more than what you had, and you run. You run, ducking beneath low branches in trees and over sprawling roots. The forest is cooler and more densely packed with foliage than the rigidly structured orchards at home but nature is all around you and that is close enough to your world that your instincts remain steady and reliable. 

You push deeper into the heart of the forest and only when you’ve lost the sounds of everyone else for a long, long time do you climb the nearest tree. They are similar to what you know — thick, some of them bearing little fruits, many of them safe to eat. Animal sounds echo, like squirrels digging around for food or rabbits hopping unevenly through the brush far down below, but you only ever see a few. You see a bird, once, perched on the edge of a branch. It watches you curiously, and flies away when your weight displaces its branch. 

At home, even the peacekeepers can’t keep the mockingjays from picking at the pits of fruit that fall from hands and baskets and thin tree limbs. They pick at what’s left over until someone sings to them and then they take off all at once like some cloud on earth, calling the same melody over and over again. Against the sinking sun, everything painted gold and dusty red and gentle violet, they wing freely through the orchard, singing without shame or fear 

When the urge comes to sing to this bird, you remember where you are and you stay silent. Instead, you watch it fly away, then you take out the extra socks you’ve gotten, pull them over your hands, and find the thickest cluster of leaves to tuck into and sleep. 

* * *

**o9**. You find her before she can die. When you communicate without words she understands, and she runs away from the tracker jackers hurt but alive. There is no room in you to question your instinct to make sure that she is well; there is no moment when you see the Girl Who Is No Longer On Fire and worry for yourself. Because all you can remember is the way she smiled at you in the training center, just like Thresh. 

When she wakes, she smiles at you again. You’ve managed a little caution — caution you abandon at her soft words, caution you never pick up again when she hands you a leg (a whole leg!) of groosling, then another. You think of your mother doing your hair up in its crown, and you think of Katniss’ glittering, fiery dress and the way that Peeta looked at her and you ask her about being in love. She laughs, kind and warm like the flush summer sun. 

At night, you show her what the things in her pack do. She knows the plants and berries like you do. Her sleeping bag is large and exciting and like a miracle and when the two of you fit it’s so warm (warm like home; home is always warm, it’s warm even in the winter, not like here) that you fall asleep more easily than you have since your name was called weeks ago. Katniss is a candle in the darkness and you are not afraid of her flame. 

She helps you, but she also trusts you and listens to you, and when she gives you a job it is the first time in a long time that you feel power come back to your hands. It’s different than successfully palming an apple when the peacekeepers can’t see, or moving a coin back and forth, but it fills you all the way with the burn of determination. You don’t question Katniss’ plan, because it is not only hers, it’s yours too — the both of yours, as if you are two mockingjays calling the same song to each other. 

There are no words for this kind of trust, because that is what trust is: a thing that exists because it does not need words. 

* * *

**1o**. You have never questioned if the cycle of day and night are true; you don’t question it now. You’re not cold anymore and maybe that’s because Katniss is with you. Katniss who is shaking so much you can feel it even though it’s hard to feel much of anything (maybe part of you is thankful that you don’t have to feel the parts of you that aren’t there anymore because the sharp end of a spear took them away). But Katniss who looks at you with the kind of expression that reminds you of your mother and the older coworkers in your group — like home. Like the place you love and the place that loves you. 

Sunrises and sunsets burning at the horizon; mockingjays singing; the tart-sweet bite of small apples; the wind through the highest leaves on the highest branches of the highest trees. 

There is a part of you, lucid and aware and afraid of your mortality now, that hopes Katniss wins. The both of you are still in the Games, after all, and not in District Eleven, and winning is part of it. Katniss should win because you love her; you’ve never needed more reasons than just the ones that feel right. 

But fear and sorrow and guilt ebb with your lucidity. As your life begins to gut like a dying flame, you forget what they feel like. Katniss sings, soft and low, and you look up at where the day is dappled by trees and their leaves, painted a gentle yellow in the light. Distantly, you think you’ll have to get back to work soon, won’t you? You’re taking a break for too long. But it’s warm and peaceful and quiet, and you want to watch the sky a little longer. 

She closes your eyes for you long after you can feel it. You never have to stop looking up at the sunlight falling through the trees. 

**Author's Note:**

> comments are lifeblood. 
> 
> [disasterganes on tumblr](http://disasterganes.tumblr.com) / [clairenchanted on twitter](https://twitter.com/clairenchanted)
> 
> [playlist selection.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=geLohC_NzxU)


End file.
